Читать книгу Tempted By Scandal - Karen Booth - Страница 12

Three

Teresa took solace in one fact—today could not get any worse. Between the threatening phone call about Joshua and running into an inexplicably irate Liam Christopher, she couldn’t have imagined a more miserable beginning to her twenty-four hours at The Opulence.

“Let’s get started.” Matt clapped his hands. “I have a million things to get to today.” He took a seat at the conference table, leaning back in the black leather chair. Despite being one of the most powerful and wealthiest men in the business world, Matt wore dark jeans and a charcoal-gray dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He was famous for rarely wearing a suit.

“Yes. Let’s.” Teresa sat opposite Matt. She pulled out her binder, already bulging with papers and notes. Matt had brought nothing but himself to the meeting, but she was used to that by now. Matt Richmond kept everything in his head. “Shall we start from the top? The guest arrival on Friday afternoon?”

Matt’s blue eyes lit up. This event clearly meant a lot to him and he was excited by the prospect of knocking people’s socks off. “Yes. Perfect.”

Teresa began to brief Matt on the latest details. She showed off artist’s renderings of the decor for The Opulence’s lobby and samples of the custom room keys being printed for the weekend. She went over each item in the goody bags guests would receive, which included complimentary personalized luxury skin-care products, a $12,000 Tiffany & Co. watch with a custom cobalt blue face, and a seven-day stay at the all-new Kapalua Lanai Resort in Hawaii, the latest in Richmond Industries’ hotel-management portfolio.

Matt was sparing no expense since it was his company’s fifth anniversary, nor was he holding back his opinions. His reactions were mostly enthusiastic, but even the elements he was wowed by still required changes to please him. Teresa nodded and made endless notes, realizing it would be a miracle if she got any sleep at all before the retreat. There was a lot to be settled and Matt expected nothing short of perfection, and that meant she had to be perfect, too. But there were outside forces in the mix—the mystery man, the Joshua problem and Liam. If any of them blew up in her face before the retreat, she was sunk.

“I’d like you to go over the Saturday night gala menu with Nadia and Aspen. Nadia knows the dietary restrictions of our VIP guests and Aspen should be apprised of all catering decisions.” Aspen Wright was the events manager for The Opulence, but Matt had pushed her aside in favor of Teresa. This had already created friction.

“Nadia and I have a meeting scheduled for 3:00 p.m. Aspen is away from the hotel today, but I’ll make sure she knows everything.” Teresa had met Nadia a few times, and they’d communicated about the retreat, but their working relationship would intensify over the coming weeks. Teresa hoped it could be a good one.

“Great. You two can have your meeting while Liam and I go over the details of Saturday morning. As soon as we’ve decided on everything, I’ll bring you in.” When Matt had first hired Teresa, he’d asked her to block out one hour of the retreat schedule Saturday morning for an undisclosed event.

“Liam is involved with the top-secret project?”

Matt nodded. “Something we’ve been working on for years. We’re keeping a very tight lid on it. He’ll be running the presentation, but I won’t be able to give you details until a day or two before the retreat. Sorry. It’s just the way it has to be.”

“Of course.” This made Teresa all kinds of nervous, not only because she needed to know her role in this mysterious announcement, but also because the topic of her would invariably come up in Matt’s meeting with Liam. She had to speak to Liam today, privately, to find out what he’d meant when he said that she ruined his father’s life. Linus had been nothing but a fabulous mentor to her and she’d always shown her deep appreciation. He was the reason she got her start in event planning at MSM. He’d made the call to get her the interview with Mariella Santiago-Marshall. That was a professional leap that would have taken an average person years to make. It wouldn’t have been possible without Linus Christopher’s help.

“Are you okay?” Matt asked. “You seem distracted.”

Teresa was mortified that she’d let her mind wander. “I’m perfectly fine.”

Matt sat forward and smoothed his hand over the glossy wood table. “Do you want to tell me how you know Liam?”

“We met a long time ago. His father was one of my professors. It doesn’t go beyond that.”

“Liam seems to think it does.”

Teresa drew a cleansing breath in through her nose. “I honestly have no idea what he was alluding to. Whatever it is has no bearing on my ability to plan your party.”

Matt leaned back again and folded his hands over his stomach. “It seems to be affecting your concentration.”

“Not at all. If I seem deep in thought, it’s only because your comments gave me some ideas I’m eager to start on.”

“I can’t afford a single misstep, Ms. St. Claire. One whiff of trouble and I’ll bring Aspen in to coordinate. She was unhappy with me for giving you the job.”

“There won’t be any problems. I can promise you that.” She was used to demanding clients by now. She’d dealt with tons of them while working for MSM. The betrothal of Delilah Rhode and Alex Dane certainly stood out as a bad one. Between the happy couple’s parents warring over glitz and over-the-top decadence vs. understated elegance, and the pre-wedding party that ended with the mother of the bride duking it out with Mariella Santiago-Marshall’s sister over a handbag, Teresa had seen it all on that one day alone.

She’d thought coming back to Seattle would be easier, or at the very least, calmer. But now she had two very different ghosts from her past staring her down. Either could be her undoing. “Is there anything else, Mr. Richmond?”

“I think it’s all well in hand for now. Liam should be heading in any minute. What do I say when he asks me what you said about your past?”

Teresa hated that this was still being discussed and she was eager to put an end to it. “I’m happy to stay for that part of the conversation. As I said earlier, I have no idea what he’s talking about.”

Matt shook his head. “It’s okay. I’d rather skip any fireworks today. I have enough of that going on already. Let’s just make sure you and Liam are ready to play nice by the time this retreat comes along.”

The notion of playing nice with Liam nearly made her laugh. Oh, she’d like to play with Liam if he could drop the attitude and get back to being the sexy, brooding guy she quite enjoyed looking at. Unfortunately, she was certain he had no interest in her. “I’m always ready to play nice. As for Liam, I’m not quite sure what it will take to make him happy.”

* * *

Liam filed into the meeting room minutes after Teresa left, but as near as Matt could tell, those two had not had a run-in. Liam seemed remarkably calm as he closed the door behind him. “I saw the TBG story.” He rounded to the other side of the conference table and took a seat. “I don’t want to be a jerk, but what in the hell are you doing? Sleeping with your assistant?”

A frustrated grumble left Matt’s throat. He wasn’t sure what to be more angry about—the fact that he’d made a mistake, the fact that the entire world knew about it or the fact that Shayla, a woman he paid an exorbitant amount of money to, had failed to do her job and get the story taken down from the site. “It just happened. We were at the hospital fund-raiser I’d had a brutal day at work, the champagne was going down a little too easy, and Nadia...”

Matt was struck with a powerful image of Nadia in the dress she’d worn—it hugged her full hips and dipped low in the front, the gentle swell of her breasts driving him crazy. Every man in the room had noticed—a normal occurrence, as Nadia was a singular beauty—but last night it was like she was lit from within. She could have gone home with any number of men—at least a dozen asked her to dance. But she dismissed them all and stayed by Matt’s side, making him laugh more than once and charming him with every flash of her eyes. Sure, he was her boss, but this had been a social affair. She wasn’t obligated to do anything but have fun. It had taken only one trip around the dance floor, his hand settled on the small of her back and hers on his shoulder, their bodies pressed together, before she asked the question, “Do you want to get out of here?”

Liam waved his hand in front of Matt’s face. “You were saying? Nadia?”

Matt needed to get his head out of the clouds. It wasn’t like him to let a woman have this kind of effect on him. “Nadia just has this way of picking up on what I’m thinking. She got me out of my bad mood.” Had she ever, although a few orgasms would do that to a guy. “Nobody else seems to care.”

“I care. I just don’t need to sleep with you to prove it.”

“Very funny.”

“I hope you’re being careful. You don’t have the best track record with women.”

Liam wasn’t wrong. Matt had a bad knack for short-lived relationships and sleeping with women with hidden agendas. His business, his personal fortune and his family made everything more complicated. His parents were always expressing their disapproval of his romantic life. “Just settle down” was a familiar refrain. “I know. I know.”

“Don’t dismiss it like that. This retreat means as much to me as it does to you. I need the Sasha project to be a slam dunk. Is this really a good time for you to be in the tabloids?”

“Look. I’m on it. Shayla is killing the story.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s already out there.”

Matt’s appreciation of Liam’s honesty was losing its luster. “What about you and Teresa? Is your issue with her going to become a problem? I can’t pull another talented event planner out of my back pocket.”

Liam’s nostrils flared. That was never a good sign. Matt knew Liam well enough to recognize just how angry he was. “Did she tell you what she did? Did she own up to it?”

“No. She has no idea why you’re so angry with her. And frankly, it has me wondering what is going on with you.” Was the stress of Sasha getting to his best friend? Was it clouding his judgment?

“She had an affair with my dad when she was his student. That was the final straw for my mom. Teresa St. Claire is the reason she and my dad got a divorce.”

“What? Seriously?”

Liam nodded solemnly. His relationship with his parents was complicated. His mother was a ball of anxiety and his father was notoriously detached. Like so many type A moguls, Linus Christopher was so focused on the bottom line that his family was of little consequence. “We both know my dad can be an idiot when it comes to interpersonal relationships, but as far as I know, he’d never cheated on my mom until Teresa came along. The fact that she’s pretending as if it doesn’t exist makes it so much worse.”

“Are you positive they had an affair? Are you sure this isn’t a case of your mom overreacting?”

“I know what you’re saying, but I saw it with my own two eyes. They were in each other’s arms in his office.”

Matt could hardly believe what he was hearing. He didn’t know Teresa particularly well, but nothing about her suggested she’d behave in such a manner. “You two need to talk this out. It was a long time ago and maybe it’s time to bury the hatchet. Neither you nor I want a single thing to go wrong with this retreat. The Sasha announcement is hugely important to us both. Teresa does a top-notch job and more than anything, there’s no time to find someone else. I really think you need to hash this out.”

Liam pressed his lips together firmly. His mind was always going. It was one of the things Matt really admired about his best friend. No stone went unturned. But he also knew it was Liam’s undoing. Overthinking never helped anything. “Fine. I’ll talk to her. But I’m not promising a thing.”